Microsoft Office Live beta

Contrary to what its name might suggest, the beta version of Microsoft Office Live is not an online version of productivity tools Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Instead, this hosted suite provides small businesses (with a staff of 10 or fewer) with tools to build and host a Web site, manage contacts and share projects. For free, the Basic service provides a company with a domain name registration, hosting and email, along with Web design tools and reports on site traffic. See our screenshot gallery for a tour of some of Office Live's features.

At the moment, only US residents can participate in the Office Live beta program, so the service previewed here is optimised for US businesses. A Microsoft UK spokesperson said that the company will announce its international strategy for Office Live later this year.

Why give away the store? Microsoft hopes to grab a large share of the market of small businesses that are still looking to develop a Web presence and manage operations via the Internet. Plus, its logo (linking to Office Live details, of course) will appear on your Web pages. Plans for keyword ads and online shopping are in the works.

The Microsoft Office Live beta comes in three flavours, starting with the free Basic version, which offers site hosting and building, as well as email support. Free only during the beta period (prices to be announced), the Collaboration and Essentials versions each provide 20 business applications, 50MB Shared Sites private work spaces with 10-user access, and phone support. Essentials adds more ways to analyse Web site traffic, along with 25GB of monthly data transfer, coordination with Outlook email, and 50 email accounts with a 20MB cap on attachments. Collaboration lacks the Web hosting and design features.

Page Designer enables you to edit a Web page to your liking without the need for any HTML knowledge.

Once you sign in and access the Microsoft Office Live beta Web page, it opens a screen that demands a domain name. There seems to be no way past this page, unfortunately, so you can't peek at any features without either registering a new domain name or transferring an existing one from your current host. Once you establish the domain name of your Web site, you reach a page loaded with options and tools presented in a two-pane interface that loosely resembles Microsoft Outlook.

You proceed with the Web Sites module by building a sample site using the Site Designer. The tool's drag-and-drop layout is straightforward and demands no coding -- it's about as simple to work out as other bare-bones page-building tools, such as those offered by Yahoo Small Business.

Beyond handling your Web site, Microsoft Office Live beta Collaborations and Essentials attempt to provide a one-stop shop for core business operations. We appreciated the sparse design of the Dashboard screen, which uses a two-pane layout and tabs to present a calendar and drop-down menus for Customers, Projects, Sales, Employees and Company.

Dashboard provides easy access to Office Live's business applications, Web Site tools and Shared Sites.

The 30 business applications included in the two paid-for packages can handle a wide range of chores, from keeping track of vendors to managing human resources. Microsoft Office Live beta Collaboration and Essentials manage customer queries, competition, media attention, employees, sales leads, sales orders and estimates, and events. You can filter and customise data to suit your needs. For example, the Customers module lets you view accounts by territory, rating or activity and export the data to a hard drive. You can import from and link business contacts to Outlook, and even create your own FAQs section on the spot. We liked the way the Project Manager made it simple to create a new project, and we hope to see similar project-tracking skills come to Microsoft Office 12.

Additionally, Live beta allows users of Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting to share data with their accountant.

We didn't run into any glitches while testing this beta service on Windows XP using Internet Explorer. Then again, we weren't able to make full use of the shared tasks in our brief tour. While Office Live beta was quick overall, we experienced brief delays after clicking some links -- a potential drawback for any business, especially those relying on a quirky Internet connection. The business applications seem most helpful as a shared work space for a small firm with employees in multiple locations.

We look forward to further testing this package of tools as it develops and becomes available beyond the US.